Media blunders of 2009

Upheaval in the media world continued in 2009, with 15,000 newspaper jobs lost, some glossy magazines killed and Washington bureaus either cut back or shuttered completely. And yet, online outlets sprouted — a few beefing up the ranks in D.C. — while more journalists embraced Twitter, blogs and platforms that don’t require ink on paper. While a number of this year’s more noticeable media blunders occurred through simple carelessness, some could be also considered growing pains in adjusting to changes in the media, such as reporters jumping the gun on Twitter, experimenting in video, cutting-and-pasting text from a blog or getting caught when homemade video surfaces on YouTube.

Top 10 Media Blunders

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1) CNN mistakes Coast Guard drill for attack: On Sept. 11, of all days, CNN blasted the following via Twitter: “BREAKING NEWS: Suspicious boat in river near Obama in DC. Police scanner reports of shots fired. Circumstances unclear." As it turns out: very unclear. What the CNN reporter actually heard over the scanner were conversation about a training exercise taking place on the Potomac. But the false alarm spread quickly over Twitter, and the network quickly corrected the report on-air shortly thereafter. Still, the White House wasn’t amused. Press secretary Robert Gibbs slapped CNN on the wrist, saying that “before we report things like this, checking would be good.”

2) The Washington Post’s “Salongate”: It’s understandable that newspapers are seeking new revenue streams, but the Post took things to another level this summer. The newspaper sent a flier to lobbyists and potential corporate backers promising an off-the-record, nonconfrontational sit-down with editors and reporters in the home of publisher Katharine Weymouth. The price per salon: $25,000. Shortly after the news broke of what smelled like a pay-to-play operation, the paper canceled the series. But the Post’s top brass continued dealing with questions on how the salons were organized and promoted for months to come.

3) Fox’s tea party trifecta: Fox News had a banner ratings year, and throughout 2009, it gave extensive coverage of Obama administration opponents, especially the so-called tea party movement’s events on April 15 and Sept. 12. But coverage of that latter event led to a couple of apologies later on. Video surfaced of a Fox News producer rallying protesters for a live shot, while Sean Hannity mistakenly used the 9/12 footage in describing a smaller rally on Capitol Hill later in the fall. (Hannity owned up to the error, apologizing to of all people, Jon Stewart!). Ironically, Fox News had actually criticized other networks in a full page newspaper ad claiming they “miss[ed] the story” of the 9/12 rally.

4) ABC correspondent tweets Obama’s OTR “jackass” swipe: While a tweet is at most 140 characters, one blasted to more than a million followers can ping-pong around the Internet within seconds. That’s what happened when ABC correspondent Terry Moran tweeted some preliminary, off-the-record chatter between President Barack Obama and CNBC’s John Harwood. He wrote: "Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass.’” Moran’s apology for publishing the off-the-record banter didn’t end the matter, as audio, and later video, of the exchange made its way online. Harwood thought that Moran erred in tweeting the comment, but took things in stride, calling the ABC reporter "a class act and a good journalist.”

5) MSM misses Van Jones, ACORN stories: The resignation of an environmental adviser in the White House may not be Watergate, but the Van Jones controversy — propelled by conservative blogs and right-wing talkers like Glenn Beck — showed the potential for partisan media to move the news cycle even as most mainstream outlets ignored the story. Similarly, Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com conducted an undercover investigation of ACORN that prompted follow-up in the press and calls for investigations from public officials. The New York Times, for one, took notice, with top editor Bill Keller even assigning an editor afterward to start monitoring the budding controversies in the opinion media.

6) NY Post’s Obama/chimp cartoon: The New York tabloid thrives off attention-grabbing tabloid covers and some of the best headlines on the planet. But the paper can also go too far when it comes to attracting eyeballs, such as publishing a cartoon showing two police officers shooting a monkey, with the text reading: "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” The cartoon immediately struck some as a racially motivated slight against the president and resulted in apologies from the paper and, a few days later, from the man on top: Rupert Murdoch.

7) Milbank-Cillizza Web show gets pulled: The first-ever White House beer summit — remember that? — prompted a lot of jokes in the media. And Washington Post writers Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza mocked the summit on their “Mouthpiece Theater” Web show, by coming up with what beers political leaders would likely drink. Their suggestion for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — “Mad Bitch beer”— did not go down well with bloggers, drew a rebuke from women’s media groups and resulted in a great YouTube parody. Both Milbank and Cillizza apologized; Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli went a step further — he killed the video show.

8) Dowd borrows from TPM (by way of “friend”): New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. So the fact that she had borrowed a passage nearly verbatim from Talking Points Memo inevitably drew attention, and the reason she gave — that a “friend” had sent it to her — failed to end the minicontroversy. While the Times corrected the column, the paper wouldn’t answer whether it’s accepted policy to allow columnists to use passages from others without any attribution. The episode was also a bit ironic considering that Dowd was the one who reported on Joe Biden plagiarizing a British politician just over two decades earlier.

9) Olbermann, Maddow misquote Murdoch and Limbaugh: It’s not always easy to admit you’re wrong — but it must sting a bit more when you have to apologize to ideological foes in the process. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann had to issue a correction over comments he attributed to Murdoch, a frequent target on “Countdown.” Olbermann had quoted Murdoch as saying that News Corp. has "never been a company that tolerates facts" — actually, he said “fat.” Later in the year, Rachel Maddow acknowledged having falsely attributed a quote to Rush Limbaugh about wishing to honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassin — that’s something the top radio host never said.

10) WaPo’s Public Enemy correction goes viral: Craig Silverman, of RegretTheError.com, called it the “the correction that launched a thousand tweets.” And he’s right. Last month, the Post noted that an “article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number.” It was a simple mistake that occurred in the editing process, but the correction somehow hit the sweet spot in media and pop culture and led to imitators on Twitter offering their own faux Post corrections in a chain that followed long after the correction was made.

Dishonorable mention: And my biggest blunder of 2009? — Another example of how one line quickly posted on a blog can reverberate the wrong way. When Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal walked out to respond to Obama’s speech before Congress in February, someone on MSNBC uttered “Oh God.” I blogged that it was Olbermann, before listening again and writing a few minutes later that who said it was unclear (Indeed, it was actually Chris Matthews.). It landed me on Olbermann’s “world’s worst person” list the following night. After explaining the mistake in a subsequent blog post, there was redemption — I was on the next night’s “best persons” list.